From [HERE] A lawsuit brought by a Compton resident detailing an alleged beating by deputies is just one of nearly three dozen federal civil rights lawsuits alleging brutality and racial bias at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

On Jan. 15, 2016, Sheldon Lockett was standing outside his godmother’s house in Compton, California, when he said Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy Samuel Aldama and his partner Mizrain Orrego jumped out of their squad car, guns drawn. Lockett became frightened and ran. Aldama and Orrego announced on the radio that Lockett was armed, then they chased and cornered him in a nearby backyard. When he attempted to surrender, the two deputies savagely beat him while yelling the N-word, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in July against the County of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD), Aldama, and Orrego.

Even though they found no weapon and Lockett hadn’t committed any crime, Aldama and Orrego arrested him and charged him with attempted murder. Because he couldn’t afford bail, Lockett was locked up in the county jail for eight months before the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office finally dropped all charges against him. Lockett’s mother filed a complaint against Aldama and Orrego with the LASD, but the department declined to investigate and took no disciplinary action against the officers, according to the lawsuit. Instead, one month later, deputies broke down Lockett’s mother’s door and ransacked her home, searching for the non-existent gun they claimed Lockett had pointed at the officers.

A review by The Appeal of nearly three dozen federal civil rights lawsuits involving deputies who have been previously named in brutality lawsuits with Aldama suggest that these alleged incidents of violence are not isolated. Plaintiffs in these lawsuits claim that LASD deputies regularly target people with mental illnesses and disabilities for violence, beat Los Angeles residents and prisoners alike, and punish those who file abuse complaints. Critics of the department say such violence is being driven, in part, by the department’s white supremacist gang culture that encourages excessive force, particularly against minorities.

It is a law enforcement culture that, ironically, apparently mirrors the very people they target for arrest in anti-gang operations: Deputies in these gangs sport tattoos signifying the number of people they have killed, flash gang signs, and tag buildings with graffiti to mark their territory. In June 2016, a tattoo artist secretly traveled to Aldama’s home to give him a tattoo with a skull, rifle, flames, and military-style helmet emblazoned with the letters “C P T” for Compton, his department’s station house, Aldama later admitted under oath. He said 10 to 20 of his colleagues had the same tattoo. Critics cited the tattoo as proof that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has not escaped its long-standing history of white supremacist gang culture.

In a deposition in May, Lockett’s attorney, John Sweeney, asked Aldama, “Do you have any ill feelings towards African Americans in general?” Aldama asked Sweeney to repeat the question several times, before answering, “I do, sir.” He later claimed have misunderstood the question and denied having ill feelings toward Black people.

Before joining the Compton station, Aldama worked as a guard in the 3000 module of the county’s Men’s Central Jail, which was home to a notoriously violent deputy gang known as the 3000 Boys. According to a 2012 federal lawsuit, Aldama was allegedly part of an assault on a prisoner and the subsequent coverup. The lawsuit said Aldama pinned the man to the ground while other deputies beat, tased, and pepper-sprayed him, leaving him with chemical burns and abrasions on his back.

Two months after Aldama got the tattoo, he and Orrego were on patrol, half a mile west of Lockett’s home, when they encountered Donta Taylor, a 31-year-old Black man, walking along the street. It’s unclear exactly what happened next. The deputies later claimed that Taylor drew a pistol and ran after they asked him if he was on probation or parole, but no gun was ever found and no witnesses corroborated the deputies’ claims. What is undisputed is that minutes later, Aldama and Orrego killed Taylor, shooting him six times after a brief foot chase. A review of the fatal shooting by Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey in 2017 concluded that “there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Aldama and Orrego did not act in self-defense and the defense of others when they fired their service weapons at others.”

(On Sept. 20, Aldama filed a response to the complaint in which he denied its allegations. Aldama’s attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Appeal. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office referred The Appeal to a July 26 statement on “alleged subgroup cultures” in the department stating in part that “At the end of the day, everyone, most importantly our public, should be confident that there are no ‘gangs’ of deputies operating subversively anywhere within the Department.”)

Abusing prisoners with disabilities or mental illnesses

The LASD patrols nearly 4,000 square miles and maintains a jail system that houses approximately 17,000 inmates making it the largest jail system in the world. But for decades, the department has been accused by advocates and public officials of routinely failing to meet the needs of and mistreating prisoners with disabilities and mental illnesses. In 2008, civil rights attorneys filed a federal lawsuit against the department, based on interviews with 70 prisoners. The lawsuit included stories of guards taking away disabled prisoners’ catheter bags as well as prisoners who were forced drag themselves on filthy restroom floors because there was no accessible entrance for their wheelchairs. In 2011, Joshua Sather, a rookie deputy, claimed that a supervisor ordered him to beat up a mentally ill prisoner. Sheriff’s officials investigated the incident, determining that that no misconduct took place. In 2012, the Los Angeles Times reported on how mentally ill prisoners, who then accounted for 15 percent of the jail’s population, bore the brunt of roughly a third of deputies’ use of force incidents.

The Appeal has identified numerous lawsuits since then with similar allegations regarding abuse of prisoners with mental illness or physical disability by LASD deputies. The allegations include officers denying prisoners medicine and allowing them to be beaten by other prisoners.

In 2013, Daniel Cohen was arrested by LASD deputies and denied access to his glasses and contacts without which he was legally blind, according to his suit. At his jail facility, he alleged, guards soon became hostile toward Cohen for his what they perceived to be his noncompliance with their visual cues. In his cell, Cohen alleges, another prisoner attacked him. But when he called for help, he said, two guards laughed as he was being struck in the face and eyes repeatedly. “Ouch, that’s gotta hurt,” one allegedly said while watching. After the beating, Cohen was taken to medical staff and later returned to the jail’s disciplinary unit, where guards placed him in solitary confinement.

In 2014, S.A. Thomas, a mentally ill man, was arrested and taken to LA County Jail. During his month-long stint there, according to his lawsuit, Thomas requested psychotropic drugs each day, and informed jail staff that he was mentally ill. He alleged that he was denied medication daily, causing him to suffer hallucinations and live in a state of fear. Even on a day that he was scheduled to be in court, he claimed, he was not given medication, rendering him less able to competently testify in a federal civil rights lawsuit against the department.

Now, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors is leading a coalition to pass the “Reform L.A. Jails” ballot initiative, which would give the Los Angeles County Civilian Oversight Commission subpoena power to investigate allegations of law enforcement misconduct and redirect resources toward increasing alternatives to incarceration, such as mental health and substance abuse treatment programs.

Abuse caused permanent injury and came with racial slurs

Since the early 1990s, there have been numerous oversight reports from independent monitors and advocacy groups on prisoner abuse and deputy-on-prisoner violence in LA County jails. In 2012, ACLU of Southern California filed a lawsuit in federal court against then-LA County Sheriff Lee Baca alleging that deputies in his jails regularly used excessive force against prisoners who were not resisting, and sometimes already unconscious, and it was facilitated by a violent, racist deputy gang culture that included the 3000 Boys and the 2000 Boys in the Men’s Central Jail. The lawsuit, Rosas v. Baca, details several accounts of deputy-on-prisoner violence during which deputies shouted racial slurs against Black people, including the N-word and “monkey.” Plaintiffs alleged that guards used force such as “slamming the inmates’ heads into walls, punching them in the face with their fists, kicking them with their boots, and shooting them multiple times with their tasers.” Injuries from beatings included fractured eye sockets and blindness, broken legs, shattered jaws, collapsed lungs, and nerve damage.

In July 2009, more than six LASD officers, three of whom were members of the 3000 Boys, shouted racial slurs while beating Evans Tutt in Men’s Central Jail. Tutt sustained multiple injuries from the beating including a broken nose, a chipped tooth, and injuries to his ribs, head, face, knee, and leg.

In 2014, the department reached a settlement with the ACLU, agreeing to create an independent panel to monitor the department’s compliance with an “action plan” to reduce violence in LA County jails. The plan required the department to implement a new use of force policy that prohibited corporal punishment and required that deputies use “the minimal amount of force that is necessary and objectively reasonable to overcome the resistance.” [MORE]